Various proposals have been made for improving composite conductors (in particular trolley wires) in terms of the mechanical strength thereof without, however, allowing a decrease in the electrical conductivity to occur. For this purpose, further alloying partners which contribute to a mechanical hardening of the conductive material are added to conductive copper material, and where for instance silver is concerned, the electrical conductivity does not decrease substantially.
Composite conductors and associated production methods are known. For different applications relating to electrical conductivity, correspondingly different configurations have already been proposed. Very specific applications are required in relation to superconductivity. Extrusion equipment has been found to have a wide range of applications in the production of rods, profiles and hollow bodies, known as conform methods, i.e., continuous forming. Older equipment is based on an invention which is described in DE 221169 C2. The method has become especially well known under the name Holton Conform, because it comes from the company Holton, from which for example the application EP 0494 755 A1 originates. The sheathing of elongate material is termed conform cladding. More recent variants of the production technique can be found in EP 0125 788 A2, for example.